


Iron Intern - 30 Drabbles

by Mix Stitch (Synph)



Series: Iron Intern [1]
Category: DCU - Comicverse, Marvel Ultimates, The Avengers (2012), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Drabble Collection, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-17
Updated: 2012-11-17
Packaged: 2017-11-18 20:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/565061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synph/pseuds/Mix%20Stitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>30 drabbles that take place in the Iron Intern universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iron Intern - 30 Drabbles

**Author's Note:**

> This story also contains spoilers for the main Iron Intern story as some of the drabbles take place around events that I have yet to write for the story itself.

**1\. beginning**

“Should you be doing this?” Stephanie Brown asks as she leans over her best friend’s shoulder and watches as his fingers fly over the keys of the computer in front of him as he enters long lines of code that gleam in blue over the black backdrop of the desktop. “Isn’t this illegal?”

Tim shrugs without missing a key on his computer. “Maybe,” he says, keeping his voice low as he hits the enter button on the keyboard. “But really, Steph, if S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t want me to hack into their networks, they shouldn’t have made things so easy for me.” Tim reaches for his mouth and then clicks on an icon that appears on screen. “Seriously, I only had to reroute my presence three times. I could do this in my sleep.”

The front page of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s encrypted website comes up on the screen of Tim’s modded desktop and Tim spares a moment to bare his teeth in a fierce grin at the sharp lines of the front page before he has to click over to his prepared backdoor.  Tim doesn’t have a log-in for the website but he’s been hacking for so long that he doesn’t have to.

It takes him all of five minutes to worm his way into their files through the various firewalls and cyber traps that spring up.

“I’m in,” he hisses at Stephanie as though they’re in a library instead of the basement lab in Tim’s mother’s least favorite vacation house at the very outskirts of the county borders, “All I need to do is… _There_!” Tim jabs his index finger at the screen and the files and folders that are opened to him. “There’s all of the information for what happened in New York. Even Tony Stark didn’t have that much information on his computer system!”

Stephanie makes a worried noise. “Maybe because it’s none of his business,” she says in a low voice, “Like it’s none of yours. You’re going to get in trouble for it.”

Tim rolls his eyes and then gets a swat on the arm for it. “No, I’m not,” Tim says as he rubs where Stephanie had whacked him and makes a face. “I’ve covered my tracks. Anyone who wants to find out where I’m from or what I was looking at is going to be bounced off of so many different satellites that they’ll think that _I’m_ an alien.”

**2\. accusation**

Tony Stark is in the middle of his mid-morning procrastination break playing Galaga when the door to his office opens.  It bounces off of the wall so hard that it leaves a dent in it that makes Tony wince to see it. Through the currently transparent glass between his absent secretary’s empty desk and his own private office, Tony gets to watch in stunned silence as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents swarm the place until they’re lining the walls.

He gets a split second to wonder what’s going on, mentally checking that he hasn’t had a hand in anything that would put him even further underneath S.H.I.E.L.D.’s nose. As he’s about to pat himself on the back for keeping his nose out of S.H.I.E.L.D. crap, Nick Fury stalks in with the tails of his massive coat billowing out behind him and a look of the utmost anger on his face.

“Did you really think that we wouldn’t notice what you were doing?” Fury bites out, narrowing his one good eye at Tony as the other man sits behind his desk and finds himself wishing that Pepper had okayed the installation of an escape pod. “This is the second time that you’ve hacked into the files for the Avenger Initiative, Stark. It’s not cute.”

Tony blinks. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Fury snaps his fingers and a bespectacled agent comes up with a thick manila folder clutched in her hands.

When the agent tries to hand it to Tony, he shakes his head. “I don’t like to be handed things,” he says with a weary note in his voice. “Shouldn’t that already be in my personnel files?” He takes the folder when the agent choses to push it across his desk instead and starts to flip through it, frowning at the papers inside. “It looks like you’ve been hacked. You should do something about that.”

A muscle near Fury’s jaw twitches and he narrows his eye at Tony. “I am.”

**3\. restless**

Tim wants to go home.

He has since Tony called in sick to work but told him to “hold down the fort anyway, kid”. Even though Tony isn’t the actual CEO of Stark Industries anymore (that would be Pepper on paper), the whole world seems to revolve around him. So far, Tim has fielded calls from more important people than he’s used to even _seeing_ on a computer monitor. He’s been turning people away all day and there’s no end in sight.

“I just want to go home,” Tim says, letting his head drop down on top of the blotter on his desk with a dull thud. He’s all by himself for the moment, he thinks, and he deserves a little bit of a whine before more people decide that they need to try and get to Tony Stark through him.

The sound of heels on tile makes him look up at the doorway and when he sees Pepper smiling at him, something tight uncoils in his chest. “Tell me can go back home now,” Tim breathes in a fast rush of words. “You would not _believe_ the day I’ve had.”

Pepper smiles. “You’re in luck,” she says, “Tony said that you can go home if you want. He’s also giving you the next two days off since he won’t be around.”

Tim perks up at that. “Is this an Avengers thing?”

“You know I can’t tell you that, Tim,” Pepper says with a particular twinkle in her eyes, “But I can tell you that Jaime will also be taking the next two days off. If you two want to compare notes or use any of the terminals in the building… Who am I to judge?”

**4\. snowflake**

Tim is used to snow. Gotham, like New York, is a sludgy _mess_ during the winter months with snow coming in droves to coat the streets and sidewalks until someone trudges out with a shovel and clears it. Tim is used to wearing the biggest coat that he can find and his good boots and stomping around through the wet show that clings to his ankles.

Jaime on the other hand…

 “Why the hell is it so damn _cold_ outside?” Jaime says once Tim lets him into his apartment in the intern housing and he can rip off his jacket with a frustrated look on his face and drop his weight on the sofa in the apartment’s living room. “Doctor Banner had me go get some special tea at this hippie place before he let me off and I swear I almost _froze_ out there. How do you do it?”

Tim covers his mouth so that Jaime can’t see him laugh and shakes his head. “Do you want some coffee to warm you up?”

Jaime gives Tim a grateful look over the back of the couch. “You’re my favorite person in the world right now.”

**5\. haze**

“Keep your safety goggles on,” Bruce shouts above the sound of the lab’s hazard alarm as it blares above them. “Jaime, I need you to help Tim to the wash stations before he gets worse. I’ll take care of things over here.”

The main lab is covered in a purple cloud that threatens to choke Bruce as he grabs for the mask at his work station. He can hardly breathe without feeling the ominous burn of the chemicals in his chest, but the other guy takes care of that, healing every bit of damage that he suffers.

Already covered by the blue of his alien armor, Jaime flits across the room and grabs Tim around the waist. “He’s not breathing, Doctor Banner,” he says after a second, voice panicked, “He’s not breathing!”

Bruce whips his head around and stares at his assistant with worried eyes. “Do you have a fan or something in that armor of yours?”

“I don’t know!”

**6\. flame**

Tony has a habit of setting things on fire, Tim realizes.

Strawberries.

Hats.

Experiments.

Tim quickly becomes used to racing for the nearest fire extinguisher whenever Tony starts getting a particular look on his face.

At the rate things are going with his internship and Tony’s flare for the flammable, he probably has enough work hours to qualify as a volunteer firefighter in the city.

**7\. formal**

Pepper greets Steve with a smile and a quick kiss on the cheek. “You look good, Captain,” she says in a genuinely warm tone as she looks the tall man over from head to toe. “I see that you took Tony’s offer. The tuxedo looks nice on you.”

“He didn’t give me much of a choice,” Steve confesses, “He said that if the interns had to dress up for this party, so did I.” Steve shrugs his broad shoulders. “I don’t mind that much though. I do feel a bit sorry for the interns…”

The sound of Pepper’s laughter makes Steve want to join in.

“You should have seen the face Jaime made when Bruce told him that he had to get a nice suit,” she says with humor bubbling under her voice. “Tim had a suit packed, but Jaime had to go shopping with some of the other interns.” Pepper rubs one hand down the front of her sleek blue dress and beams at Steve. “They look like little adults. I’m actually glad that Tony made this party a formal affair.”

**8\. companion**

“If you were the Doctor and you could only pick one companion for the rest of your life up to your next regeneration, who would you pick?”

Jaime looks up from his comfortable spot on the plush couch in Tim and Tony’s office space and blinks at the other intern. “Dude, you’re such a _nerd_ ,” he says, throwing his head back and laughing for a second before sobering. “And besides, everyone knows that Donna was the best companion in the new series.”

Tim blows a raspberry and narrows his eyes at Jaime over his textbook. “Wrong,” Tim announces in clipped tones. “Martha Jones was the best companion. She was a doctor and she saved the earth. How can you say that Donna was better?”

“Dude, I’m so not getting into a fight about Doctor Who with you,” Jaime hisses, making a face at Tim. “I like Martha, but when Donna left the series I cried. I _cried_ , man. Don’t you understand how important that is?”

**9\. move**

The move-in coordinator for the intern housing seems to _love_ her jo. Taller than most of the teenagers in the room, the bespectacled young woman smiles after every sentence as though she’s excited at the chance to speak to all of the interns.

“Welcome to housing orientation,” she says to a room full of Stark Industries interns waiting to be placed. “For the next year, this will be your new home. I’m Marsha and I’ll be helping you all get settled in.” She claps her hands together so that the sound echoes through the room. “If you’re in this room now, then you’re going to be in my section of housing and you’ll probably be working where the action is in Stark Industries. I hope you’re prepared to have a good year.”

Tim sighs under his breath and crosses his arms over his chest as he tries to make himself invisible against the wall off to the side of the main room. It doesn’t work.

“You look like you don’t want to be here,” one of the other interns says to Tim with a wry smile on his lips. “Orientations suck, don’t they?” The other teenager is taller than Tim by several inches and he has messy brown hair that’s in desperate need of a haircut. “I’m Peter, Peter Parker. I moved in last night and I have no idea why I’m here now.”

Tim allows himself a quiet burst of laughter and he sticks his hand out for Peter to shake. “I’m Tim Drake,” he says, “And my dad helped me get set up this morning. I guess we’re on the same boat.”

**10\. silver**

“There’s a surfboard in your wall.”

“Yes, Tim. I know.”

“No, Tony. There’s a freaking silversurfboard stuck in your wall. How can you ignore that?”

“Don’t worry about it, Tim. I’m just watching it for a friend.”

**11\. prepared**

Steve --Captain America, Jaime’s brain corrects-- tells the Hulk to smash the green aliens attacking them and Jaime takes that as his cue to do what he can to help. He forms a blaster out of his armor and then sends a sonic blast at some of the Skrulls trying to sneak up on Tim where he and Black Widow are cutting a swatch through a huge crowd of them.

Speaking of Tim…

Tim has his collapsible staff fully extended and he’s holding his own against the Skrull menace. Even without superpowers, Tim is badass enough to make Hawkeye and the other Avengers look at him with definite approval in their eyes.

Jaime taps into the communications channel used by the Avengers and connects to Tim’s ear bud. “Dude, are you prepared for every bad thing that could happen?”

Tim’s laughter echoes through Jaime’s ears, as does the satisfying crack of shattering bone a moment later when he uses his staff to disarm a Skrull warrior. “Of course I am,” Tim says, “You should see what I have planned in case of a zombie attack.”

**11\. knowledge**

“You want me to do _what_?” Tim asks with Peter one eyebrow raised as high as it can go. “I’ve never tutored anyone before in my _life_. Why don’t you do it?”

Peter shrugs his skinny shoulders and then pats the white design on the front of his green t-shirt. “I’ve been trying,” he says with a frustrated twist to his mouth. “But I’m good at science and so is Miles. He doesn’t need my help there. And besides--” Peter makes a face. “Besides, he’s like my little brother. I can’t be tough on the little guy.”

Tim sighs and rubs the space between his eyebrows. “And you want me to tutor him?”

“Well,” Peter says as he leans back in his chair. “You are a little super genius, aren’t you?”

**12\. denial**

“My intern is _not_ a supervillain-in-training,” Bruce all but snarls at Nick Fury as he stands before the S.H.I.E.L.D. director’s desk with his arms crossed and his posture purposefully defiant. “He’s a good kid and he’s been nothing but helpful this past year. He’s not evil.”

Fury doesn’t look impressed. “Are you so sure that you’d know if the kid was a bad egg, Doctor Banner?”

Bruce grits his teeth. “And just what is that supposed to mean, Director?”

“It means that you’re standing up for some kid with an alien living in his spine. The same type of aliens, I might add, that are currently staging an invasion underneath our noses.” Fury steeples his fingers underneath his chin and then frowns at Bruce. “Forgive me for wondering if you’ve been compromised. It seems to happen often enough around here.”

**13\. wind**

Several of the other interns in the internship program are metahumans (because Tim finds that the word “mutant” has too many negative associations). Tim finds that out on his first night alone in his apartment when a race between speedsters leaves the carpeting on three floors on fire.

Most of the metas know how to use --or hide-- their powers.

Maxine Hunkel does not.

“I’m so sorry,” the tall redhead says after sending Tim sprawling over the main couch in their floor’s lounge. “I’m usually better with control, but I’m tired and I messed up your clothes didn’t I?” Maxine talks a mile a minute, but her big green eyes are worried as she tries to dust Tim off with shaking fingers. “Ma said that I needed to learn to control my powers before I took this internship, but I thought I could--”

Tim touches Maxine’s hand and smiles to lessen the sting of interrupting the other intern mid-sentence. “It’s fine,” Tim says as though his head still isn’t spinning from the brief gust of wind that Maxine had released. “I’m not hurt.” He sits up and then pats the couch cushions beside him. “You know that one of the X-Men has powers like yours right? Storm? She could help you.”

Maxine’s face turns as red as her hair. “I-I know,” she mutters, visibly ashamed. “I-I have an appointment for next week, but I thought I could do it.”

“I’m sure you can,” Tim says in a low voice, “But prating with a professional can’t hurt and besides, I heard that Storm was a good teacher. Don’t worry.”

**14\. order**

Two large shawarma platters.

Six gingerbread lattes from Starbucks.

Indian food from Bruce’s favorite place.

Wings and eggrolls for Black Widow and Hawkeye to share.

Enough fast food to feed a god --or two if Thor’s brother counts.

Even with Jaime and Maxine helping him bring lunch to the Avengers where they’re holed up in Tony’s office doing something important, Tim still struggles to make sure that every single order is perfect. Hell, he struggles just to _carry_ them.

It had better be worth it.

**15\. thanks**

“Did you just…” Tony looks from Tim back to the man laying out on his back on the floor of his office. “Did you just _tase_ him?”

Tim blinks and nods. “He was coming at you with a gun, Tony! What else was I supposed to do?”

Tony shakes his head and then reaches for his phone. He hits the call button and then barks out a demand for security to head to his floor before hanging up. “You saved my life, Tim,” he says in a low voice. “What is this? The second or third time you’ve done that?”

“You do get in a lot of trouble, Tony.”

“Yeah, well thanks anyway, kid.”

Tim growls. “Don’t call me that.”

**16\. look**

One weekend a month, Tony loans Tim to the X-men. He reasons that “at least it isn’t the Fantastic Four” and since two of his interns are already training there, what’s one more?

Cyclops doesn’t seem to feel the same way.

“I’m not taking care of your kids,” Scott Summers says as he watches Maxine float Tim on a curtain of air as several teenage speedsters play a fast-paced game of catch on the far side of the grounds. “Training Maxine was a favor to her grandmother. I don’t need more Stark Industries interns underfoot.”

Tony smirks. “He has permission to be here.”

“From who?”

“From me.”

There’s a smell of fresh rain and ozone and then Scott looks up and swears under his breath. “Why would you do that, Ororo?”

Ororo touches down on the ground beside the two men and then waves one hand over at where Maxine and the speedsters are playing. “He’s helping his friends,” she says in a voice that holds no room for arguments. “I talked with the others and they gave their permission as well. Tim Drake is welcome here and no amount of dirty looks will change that.”

**17\. summer**

The interns don’t get a summer vacation.

Not really.

However, most of the interns take a vacation anyway.

Jaime takes some time off to go visit his parents back home in Texas. Tim goes back to Gotham for a week. Even Peter makes himself scarce during the summer months and he only lives a few blocks away from the intern housing.

Tony hates to admit it, but he kind of misses the frantic scurrying of little intern feet in the morning.

**18\. transformation**

“I’m not watching Beauty and the Beast with you, Bart.”

“But, _Tim--_ ”

“We’ve seen it three times this year, Bart. If you want to see it, ask Maxine. I know _she_ likes musicals and she seems to like you.”

“…”

“…”

“Bye,Tim!I’llseeyoulater!”

**19\. tremble**

The ground shakes as the Hulk lumbers toward where Tim is sitting with Peter and Jaime pressed up against his sides on the other side of an overturned car. Every step that he takes rattles the ground and jostles Tim’s broken arm and the makeshift split that Peter had fashioned from his webbing. Tim winces and tries to make himself a smaller target.

“Bruce won’t hurt us,” Jaime says in soft voice. “The battle is over and everyone is calming down. He’s probably just looking for more enemies to smash. We’ll be fine.”

Peter huffs out a breath as the ground shakes. “Says you,” he mutters. “We need to get Tim to a doctor.”

Jaime sighs and cranes his neck so that he can watch the Hulk walk towards them. “We will.”

**20\. sunset**

“Am I going to get in trouble to keeping you out past your bedtime?” Jaime asks as he watches Miles dip a french fry into his chocolate milkshake. “You should be at school.”

Miles scrunches up his nose and then kicks his heels against the plastic booth. “Peter said that I could talk to you whenever I need to,” he says as he stares down at his milkshake and the remains of his dinner. “And I really need to.”

There’s something about the tone of Miles’ voice that makes Jaime sit up and look closer at him as the scarab starts bleating warnings in his brain. “What’s wrong, Miles?” Jaime asks. “Are you hurt?”

Miles shakes his head and then stops. He nods his head once. “My uncle is dead,” Miles says without looking up at Jaime’s face. “It’s my fault. He’s dead and it’s my fault and I don’t know who I can talk to, but Peter says-- Peter says that you’re good at things like this. He said that you’ve been through something like this before.”

Jaime thinks back to Paco and forces himself not to cringe at the memory of hurting his best friend. He reaches out and touches Miles’ hand. “I don’t know how good I am, but I’m willing to listen.”

**21\. mad**

Batman slams Tim’s back up against the wall of a dark Gotham alley hard enough to hurt and then glowers down at him through the narrowed lenses of his cowl. “How long have you known?”

Tim blinks up at the enraged vigilante, confused. “How long have I known what?”

“How long have you known who I was,” Batman snarls in Tim’s face as he holds him up with one gauntleted hand. “How long have you been spying on me for Tony Stark?”

“What the hell are you talking about? If Tony knows who you are, it’s not my fault,” Tim snaps in return as he tries to shove Batman away from him. “I didn’t tell him who you are, but I’m not surprised that he knows. You’re good, but you’re not _that_ good.”

Batman makes a loud noise, but releases Tim so that he can stand on suddenly shaky legs. “Bluejay recognized you,” he says in a softer tone. “You were at an event with Stark and he remembered seeing you following us when Nightwing and I were training him.” Batman shakes his head and frowns. “If you’ve known who I was for so long, why didn’t you tell anyone?”

Tim shakes his head. “It’s not my story to tell.”

**22\. thousand**

“How many vampires have you taken out so far?”

Tim looks up from his holy water gun and sees Thor’s… personal assistant beaming down at him. Darcy Lewis is a bright spot in Tim’s occasional run-ins with S.H.I.E.L.D. and she knows it. “Three hundred this week,” Tim hedges as he tries to count. “It’s not even that hard anymore. I don’t know what Blade is doing to them, but they can’t even go for my throat by the time they make it here.”

Darcy laughs and then drops down on the steps next to Tim’s hip. “Not to brag, but Thor and I took out a couple thousand when they swarmed us.”

“Does it really count if you have a god doing all of the heavy work?”

“I sure hope so!”

**23\. outside**

“Let’s go get something to eat,” Pepper says when she comes into the lab and sees everyone all but chewing on the edges of their pencils. “You’ve been in here all day and that can’t be good. Go get cleaned up. I’m taking you out for pizza.”

Tony and Bruce don’t move, but their respective interns can’t move fast enough.

Pepper clears her throat until the two men left behind look up at her with identical expressions of confusion on their faces. “You too, boys.”

**24\. winter**

Maxine pulls all of the snow off of the trees on the grounds and forms them into a cloud around her. Managing the wind and the snow at the same time is challenging, but when Maxine looks up at her smiling mentor, she feels a burst of strength.

“Look, Ororo,” she calls out as she uses the wind to shape the show into a floating figure that looks vaguely like the Hulk. “I did it!”

Ororo smiles and then flies over so that she can take Maxine’s hands and help her guide the snow back to the ground. “I’m proud of you,” she says, “In a few weeks, you’ll be able to do this on your own. We’ll have you practicing with storms in no time.”

**26\. diamond**

“You have a lot of friends that are made out of well… precious metals and jewels.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call Miss Frost a friend.”

“I don’t care what you call her, Tony. She’s currently made out of diamond and making birds crash into the window outside to get at her. Can you _please_ see what she wants before more birds get hurt?”

**27\. letters**

I don’t care that you don’t work for S.H.I.E.L.D., Timothy Drake. If I see you snooping around in my files one more time, I’ll make sure that you start. No one gets repeat access to S.H.I.E.L.D. files without consequences. You get one warning.

This is yours.

\-- Nick Fury

**28\.  promise**

“You’re not going to grow up and be a supervillain are you?”

Tim saves his project and clicks out of the program on his work computer so that he can give Bart all the attention that he needs. “Of course not, Bart,” he insists, “I’m working with the Avengers. I don’t think I _can_ be a supervillain after that.”

Bart doesn’t look as though he believes Tim. “A lot of bad guys were good guys,” he says in a low voice, “What if something bad happens and you turn into a bad guy?”

“I won’t,” Tim says in a low voice, “What’s got you thinking about that?”

“K-Kon,” Bart whispers. “He’s got some weird mind-control thing going on. Did you see it on the news? He took out a bunch of heroes before disappearing.” Bart rubs his fingers over his bare arms. “It could happen to anyone. I’m just worried, Tim.”

Tim sighs. “What if I promise?”

Bart lifts his head and looks at him. “That would help.”

**29\. simple**

Near the end of Tim’s internship, Tony comes into the office with Pepper in tow. Both adults look nervous about something and Tim frowns to see it.

“Is something wrong?”

Pepper shakes her head and then elbows Tony when he fails to do the same. “Your internship is about to end, Tim,” she says as Tony continues to look everywhere except at Tim. “Tony has a proposition for you, if you’re interested.”

It’s hard for Tim’s mind not to leap for the worst conclusion. “Don’t tell me that you want to be my sugar daddy.”

Tony chokes on a breath. “What? No,” he blurts out. “You’re like a baby to me. No! I’m trying to give you a permanent job, damn it!”

Tim blinks. “You want me to work for you? For real?”

“Did you think I’d just let you go so that Richards and his family could snatch you up? No way, kid.”

**30\. future**

Tim’s costume is… not as cool as Iron Man’s but it will have to do.

Red and black with a hood that covers most of his head, the costume makes him look like a real hero instead of a sidekick. He straightens the belt around his waist and then looks at where Peter is hanging upside down from a gargoyle with Miles sitting in a little websling underneath him.

“Are you ready for this, guys?” Tim asks, addressing his team with a fierce grin on his face as he takes in the sight of his team getting ready. “The Avengers trusted us to take these guys on. We’ve been practicing for this for years and Batman has the Justice League waiting with Tony for cleanup. Let’s do this!”

Jaime laughs. “It’s nice to know that you didn’t get your speech skills from Cap.”


End file.
